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Comment by freedomben | Hacker News Reader

I don't really see why the author thinks this is so funny. While I have no love for giant corporations, I do have a strong distaste for government pushing people around like that. There is nothing more frustrating than having to spend a fortune on lawyers just to deal with the government, rather than adding any value to the product.

I do wonder a bit, if this isn't meant to be a protectionist show move from the EU demonstrating (particularly in the wake of upcoming brexit) that there are benefits to staying in the EU... although I prefer to apply Hanlon's Razor liberally.

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McD was definitely not minding its own business when the government suddenly showed up. From https://m.independent.ie/business/irish/its-like-connacht-wi... :

McDonald’s previously hit Supermacs with a 41-page objection against its plans to use the Supermac’s name in Europe stating that it would "take unfair advantage of the distinctive character and repute" of trademarks previous won by the global restaurant giant.

The US firm partly based its objection on already secured trademarks for its products such as the ‘Big Mac’ and ‘Chicken McNuggets’, claiming introducing Supermac’s into the market would cause confusion.

If McDonald's genuinely thought Supermac's expansion would cause customer confusion, then they're not only right to challenge it but they have a duty to challenge it in order to protect their trademark.

McDonald’s is famous for trying to sue a Scottish woman who started a sandwich shop in England called McMunchies, claiming that they owned any use of “Mc” to refer to food. Along with various other small clearly unrelated businesses with Irish/Scottish owners.

Which brought Lord Godfrey MacDonald, of Clan MacDonald, down on them (“I am The MacDonald”).

There’s something particularly egregious about large corporations trying trademark widely used generic words or terms.

Such behaviour is prohibited most places. That these companies try intimidating people with spurious law suits makes it easy to dislike them.

My own personal favourite is a dodgy gym eqipment company which has been recently bullying various blogers for using the generic term for a group of cyclists, peloton. They can’t have the word it belongs to common language.

It’s crazy. It’s like if McDonalds tried to trademark “hamburger” and then threatened to sue people who live in Hamburg.

If I remember correctly, Disney has a trademark for "snow-white".

Protection of a generic word within particular context may be absolutely fair. Say, you made an OS, and called it "Pretzel". You can't go, and prohibit anyone to call their pretzels pretzels, but if some big corpo Shmoogle will create their own product called Pretzel OS, I'm pretty sure you'll be not ok with it. "Mc" is no different, if applied narrowly to burgers there's no reason why it can't be copyrighted, because within the context it's not in fact a generic term. Crazy behavior of copyright lawyers is a problem for sure, but a separate one.

In the case of the gym manufacturer they've taken a word from the sport of road cycling, peloton from the French for platoon, and are now harassing anyone using that word to describe cycling related software.

What's particularly annoying is that their product is a spinning "bike" which has nothing to do with road cycling apart from pedalling. Specifically the Digital Peloton Vlog, which reviews cycling simulators and software.

In fact there is no duty to challenge. You can search the USPTO documents up and down and this is not considered during trademark disputes. It generally is a good idea, but whether you as a trademark owner prevent dilution or not is not your responsibility.

So no, McDonalds does not have a duty to do so, only an option.

https://www.uspto.gov/about-trademarks

I'm pretty sure that's completely wrong. Everything I've heard about trademarks says you must protect them or you risk losing them. There's even a wikipedia page on "Generic trademark" about the problem of trademarked items becoming generic terms and thus at risk of losing legal protection in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark

Even if McDonald's were being total dicks about Supermac's, the remedy shouldn't be for the Government to act like a petulant child.

It's not the government. It's an independent agency that follows it's procedures correctly no matter whether it's a mom&pop shop or a global giant. McD caused the whole issue and then didn't bother submitting the right kind of evidence.

What was the right kind of evidence?

Seems like they submittet proof that they used the trademark in marketing materials, but no independent proof that they actually managed to sell even a single BigMac commercially.

They provided detailed sales numbers.

They provided the number “75” for each year with nothing to back it up.

The independent kind. Like said many times by others here, a news article fron those years would have sufficed.

You do understand that the only reason why trademarks exist is the Government?

Of course, but they were made to exist under a set of rules and principles. That doesn't give the Government an excuse to act like a petulant child.

The government didn't act like that, they followed their rules. From what I gather, they wanted independent evidence and McDonalds gave them brochures and data printed in-house.

If "everyone knows McDonalds sells Big Macs" is a good argument then it shouldn't be hard to find evidence that it indeed is so. It wouldn't have been hard, McDonalds just didn't bother to provide that for some reason.

If a small, young company would try to defend their trademark nobody would believe them even if they printed brochures, menus, and told "yes, we really really really do sell these". There's nothing of substance in such claims. Printing is cheap.

Because McDonald’s should not have to follow the rules and deliver the right papers and evidence when requested to do so of course.

It's not the government, it's a court.

In most (all?) democracies a court of law is a branch of Government. In the USA the judiciary is described as being co-equal to the executive and legislative branches. It's largely the same in the European Union and Westminster-style governments.

> I do have a strong distaste for government pushing people around like that.

Since trademarks are an artificial monopoly erected by the government, they exist to push people around. So would the solution be no trademarks?

If so, any step that devalues the concept of trademarks (because they're considered unreliable) should be a positive, no?

I'm pretty low on IP in general but trademarks do serve a useful purpose: namespaces are rivalrous so it makes sense that the government be able to say, hey, you can't start selling low grade big Macs in your town and potentially give McDonald's a bad name.

It's not about "giving mcdonalds a bad name", it's about protecting me from buying what I think is mcdonalds (for some reason), but actually being sold something else.

As Pirate Party say:

"Trademarks are okay as long as they protect consumers from fraud, etc, but never okay when they punish consumers."

They're similar to rules protecting origin. If I buy Feta, it's guaranteed to come from Greece. This protects me. Nothing stops me from buying "greek style cheese", which comes from Italy, I have informed choice.

Very interesting question, thank you! Requires some thought, and I'm still evaluating it.

Some initial thoughts are, that I tend to agree with you. On the one hand, I think the pragmatist view would be that society is benefited (through disambiguation of source, quality, etc. On the other hand, to equitably codify such a subjective mechanism (e.g. does it cause confusion in reasonable consumers?) is nearly impossible, and rather than risk unjust vertical empowerment of one entity (government) over another (citizen), I think I'd rather just not do it all (which is to your point).

Like many things, I suppose it comes down to questions of philosophical purity (and therefore morality) vs. pragmatic positions. I see myself as more of a purist than a pragmatist these days, but that may just be my natural inclination toward non-conformity (and all the governments I can think of are heavily tilted toward the pragmatic side).

> I do have a strong distaste for government pushing people around like that

Which people? It’s not like this is a taco truck we’re talking about. Who cares what happens to McDonald’s, honestly?*

* Something like 1 in 7 Americans works for McDonald’s at some point in their life, which is at least interesting if nothing else.

> * Something like 1 in 7 Americans works for McDonald’s at some point in their life, which is at least interesting if nothing else.

And if Mcdonalds didn't exist, people would buy from Burger King, which would have more stores, and employ those 1 in 7 americans

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